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Jun. 10th, 2014 08:10 pm
A little pomp. And also, circumstance.
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nightengaleskndThere seems to be a bit of graduation inflation going on. Coworkers have been going to their children’s kindergarten and 8th grade graduations. A patient recently had a preschool graduation, complete with mortarboard, tassel and gown. Of course, I cooed over the picture and I congraduated my co-workers. But I can’t help thinking that preschool, and kindergarten, and in today’s educational system, 8th grade, aren’t really things one graduates FROM. Merriam-Webster, online, defines graduation as “The act of receiving a diploma or degree from a school, college, or university.” The last time I checked, preschool was not a degree-granting institution.
Neither, by the way, is a residency or fellowship program.
It wasn’t like this when I was growing up - at least it wasn’t like this for me. I don’t recall any particular fuss or ceremony to mark the end of preschool, besides everyone talking up the fact that we were going into real school next year, Kindergarten. We put on a show near the end of Kindergarten where we sang Rainbow Connection, and recited Dorothy Aldis’ poem about soap. Each person was assigned a phrase – mine was “and slithers.” Oh, and I was the narrator for the “Three Billy Goats Gruff.” Our teacher was pleased she had a kindergartener who could read well enough to be a narrator. But there was no ceremony of any kind and it was definitely not a graduation. Even fifth grade, where we were arguably completing something, that is, elementary school, didn’t have any more of a ceremony than a school-wide assembly with singing and awards. I can’t even remember if they called each fifth-grader’s name.
High school was my first real graduation, which makes sense, since a high school diploma was my first degree or diploma. There were nineteen of us in my graduating class, more or less. I remember graduation as possibly the first time a classmate was assigned to be my partner who didn’t complain, argue or make a face. We had a vote beforehand, if we wanted to wear caps and gowns or have the boys wear suits and ties and the girls wear white dresses. The class of 6 had done the suit/dress thing two years earlier. The class of 6 was not the class of 1986 or 1996 or 2006, but rather a class of 6 students. I had a vague sense that caps and gowns were really a college degree thing, and had grown up reading turn-of-the-century books where girls graduated in white dresses, often white dresses they had made themselves in home-ec class. This seemed suitable to me and I had always wanted a white dress. We voted for caps and gowns. I still have my cap, or rather, my cap is sitting on the head of a rag doll in my parents’ home. I wore a red dress under my cap and gown. There’s a picture of me in the red dress and cap in my grandmother’s home, framed. My head is tilted a little, as it always seems to be in photographs, even though it never seems to be tilted when I look at myself in the mirror.
We processed in to the orchestra playing Pomp and Circumstance. The “orchestra” consisted of non-senior and non-junior Honor Society members of the school’s two musical ensembles. I had played in the orchestra in earlier years. Second violin part, for the record, does not sound like anything recognizable as Pomp and Circumstance.
The recognizable theme of Pomp and Circumstance goes roughly:
Daah duh duh duh daah daah, daah duh duh duh daaaah
The second violin for the same opening bars is more or less:
Dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit
I can no longer hear the melody of Pomp and Circumstance. My brain fills in the second violin part. And cringes. Our recessional, by the way, was a piece we always called “Herclules” which sounded baroque. Handel maybe? I’m not sure I ever knew who wrote it. I loved it, much more than I ever loved Pomp and Circumstance before the second violin part ruined all that. I could sort of play the melody by ear. I was never asked to play the melody. I was first asked to play the second violin part and then later given a simplification of the second violin part. I didn’t sight read well at the time and had no idea what the second violin part was meant to sound like, modified or no. We also had a choral piece, Flying Free, which we sang soprano, second and alto along with a piano and flute. I sang second soprano of Flying Free for 6 years.
We sat in folding chairs on the stage of the school’s CafeGymTorium, on platforms I had helped build, lit by lights I had helped hang and focus. On one of the rafters was a pair of my old shoes, scuffed and paint-spattered. Several weeks earlier I had signed the shoes and another techie had scaled the scaffold to screw them to the beam. We’d gotten the idea from a theatre tour. A year earlier, that other techie was afraid to climb to the top of the scaffold. I had helped her climb when ready, without letting anyone on our crew ridicule her, or anyone else, for where they would or wouldn’t climb. I was proud of my leadership of the tech crew and I was proud of my shoes. And I was proud to be graduating, but I didn’t feel much of a connection to the other 18 people on the folding chairs on the stage. The headmaster made a speech. An invited guest speaker made a speech. The class president made a speech. The valedictorian made a speech. We walked across the stage, got our diplomas, did hugs and handshakes and returned to our folding chairs. I’m not sure I have spoken to any one of those 18 people since.
Four years later, I graduated from college, which is a degree-granting program. Bryn Mawr splits up the end of the year sort of the way some countries split up roles as belonging to the head of government and the head of state. One Friday in late April or early May is the Last Day of Written Work. The next Sunday is May Day, usually the first Sunday in May. May Day is marked with flowers and songs and strawberries and May Pole Dancing and plays and parades. At the end of May Day, the seniors process through a line of underclassfolks, everyone holding a lantern. People cry and hug their friends. Then the juniors storm the steps that were formerly reserved for seniors. They start the school cheer for the first time. The traditional year is over. There is then one week of exams for seniors. Seniors mark the end of the academic year by ringing the bell in the tower as many times as their class year. I had some help. There’s another week for everyone else’s final exams, which takes us to Saturday. There’s a Convocation with speeches and then Garden Party, which are reasonably Pompish. I stopped off to leave a second pair of scuffed shoes as a sacrifice to Athene. The next day is Graduation. I always felt that May Day was for the students and Graduation was for the families.
I can’t remember if we processed at all. We sat on white folding chairs under a tent on the campus green. We were seated by major, which meant I was not the last to graduate, because B for Biology comes before a lot of things. I was the last biology major to graduate. I can’t remember if there was music. We were issued gowns from the costume closet. We wore caps. Underneath mine I wore a pink dress. There’s a picture of me in the pink dress and cap in my grandmother’s home, framed. My head is tilted a little. My hair is pinned up in this picture and in a ponytail for my high school picture. I otherwise cannot tell the difference between the two.
My father had apparently expressed a desire for the family car to survive through my college graduation. He had apparently expressed this desire in front of the car. The car survived graduation and made it about half of the 6 hour drive home before the transmission gave out on an exit ramp.
Nine years later I graduated from Medical School, which is also a degree-granting program. The ceremony took place at a major concert hall nearby. I wore a gown and some fur collar thingie. There’s a picture of me in a different pink dress wearing the fur collar thingie, also framed at my grandmother’s house, and my head is tilted exactly the same way as in the other two graduation photos and I have to stop and figure out which one is which every time I look at them.
My biggest concern about my medical school graduation was accessibility since I was not climbing stairs well, and since it would matter to my family if I walked across the stage with a cane. I wrote up the whole ceremonial nightmare here at the time. Even though I had asked about stairs several months in advance, and was assured there were a few to each side of the stage and we had a plan to deal with them, they sprung 1.5 flights of stairs on me backstage at the rehearsal several hours before the event. I had a huge breakdown, and only because I had a popular classmate with a broken foot was I able to bypass the 1.5 flights of stairs for the event itself. The highlight of my medical school graduation was a Bryn Mawr alumna in the audience starting the Bryn Mawr cheer after I graduated. And knowing I wouldn’t have to deal with my medical school ever again.
I had a different car by this time. The transmission just about made it over the mountains from Philadelphia to West Virginia before giving out entirely.
Three years later I completed my residency program. Residency is not a degree or diploma program, so there’s no need for a graduation. Furthermore, I made it quite clear to everybody involved that I had no intention of ever graduating from anything ever again. It was hell on transmissions.
We had a dinner instead, just our pediatrics department, for the 6 of us. We showed pictures from Halloweens and from baby showers and from the resident retreat a month earlier that I secretly wondered if we were only having to generate pictures for the dinner. I think they played some nice background music as the slides played on screen. We invited families and attendings and managed to get most of the other-year residents off rotation to join us After a nice, low-key dinner, we did have a little ceremony where they gave out teaching and research awards and each of us got a certificate of completion and a nice clock and we did hugs and handshakes.
Now it’s four years later. I’m the only Fellow in our department. And fellowship is not a degree or diploma program. So I was expecting a lunch or dinner, a mug, some joke gifts, hugs and handshakes.
Two weeks ago, someone mentioned my graduation off-hand.
This was the first I’d heard of it. And it hadn’t occurred to me to ask, since fellowship is not something from which one graduates. And I’m not in the hospital with the residents who might have been talking about such things. An actual graduation ceremony, for the 47 residents and 3 fellows completing all the programs in the hospital. Everyone just assumed someone else had told me. There was a promise of chocolate-dipped strawberries at the reception to follow.
With 2 weeks notice, I didn’t even try to get my parents here. They may be upset later but it was the right decision for me. I invited two co-workers who were not involved in the ceremony, who I trusted not to make a big deal out of things, and warned everyone not to call it a graduation. I started to e-mail people about the stairs.
Two days before the event, they announced the dress code: white coats, suit and tie for men, black/white business attire for women. Fortunately, my department had ordered me a white coat at the start of my fellowship. They almost didn’t, because people in our department almost never wear white coats, and I stopped after a few months when I realized how much time I spent crawling around on the floor. Also, I didn’t need the pockets the way I had in residency, because I had an office. Right before the ceremony, someone pointed out that my white coat actually had the old hospital logo on it, the one that was changed last year when we “rebranded.” She managed to fold over the collar to hide the old logo. Also fortunately, I actually had a black suit jacket and skirt. I’d worn them before, to funerals.
Also two days before the event, we received written instructions, including a parking map, diagrams diagrams for the processional/recessional, two pages of narrative instructions, a list of participants in order with seating assignments. I think more paper was generated for this event than for my high school, college and medical school graduations combined, which are all things people actually graduate from. The ceremony occurred in a local theatre. It turned out the stage was accessible. There were a few steps backstage, but no surprise full flights that I had to climb with other people in step. They played a recording Pomp and Circumstance with the second violin part loud and clear in the background. We processed in. We walked across the stage as our program directors said nice things about us. We recessed out. I was on call and realized I had gotten paged. I called the social worker back to discuss a patient. We reconvened for a reception. I had my chocolate-dipped strawberry. A hammer dulcimerist and a cellist played Pachelbel’s Canon. I socialized with the 5 people there from my department who I see every day. I met someone who had heard me speak recently at Grand Rounds who told me he had been able to use my material to address problematic language used to discuss a patient. I went home and went to bed.
Recently, I spoke to a group of counselors at a camp for kids with disabilities. Wanting to impress the counselors, who were college students, the camp director wanted to know how much school and training I had done to get to that point. When I clarified, he said to start with college which added up to 14 years.
Whether you slice it as a 3 year training program, 10 years of medical training, or the 14 years he cited, I’m three weeks away from being done for good. I’m ready in terms of medical knowledge and patient care skills. I do have to write up my research, and there’ll be a certifying exam to take some time next year, but basically I’m done.
Being done matters to me. Knowing I’ve completed the training matters. Celebrating my accomplishment with people who care about me matters, including co-workers who have already thrown me one party complete with silly hats, a bag of chocolate chips and a rousing rendition of – wait for it – For She’s A Jolly Good Fellow.
Ceremonies where I dress up to walk across a stage to strains of Elgar’s second violin part so that people can take pictures just don’t hold the same meaning.
Neither, by the way, is a residency or fellowship program.
It wasn’t like this when I was growing up - at least it wasn’t like this for me. I don’t recall any particular fuss or ceremony to mark the end of preschool, besides everyone talking up the fact that we were going into real school next year, Kindergarten. We put on a show near the end of Kindergarten where we sang Rainbow Connection, and recited Dorothy Aldis’ poem about soap. Each person was assigned a phrase – mine was “and slithers.” Oh, and I was the narrator for the “Three Billy Goats Gruff.” Our teacher was pleased she had a kindergartener who could read well enough to be a narrator. But there was no ceremony of any kind and it was definitely not a graduation. Even fifth grade, where we were arguably completing something, that is, elementary school, didn’t have any more of a ceremony than a school-wide assembly with singing and awards. I can’t even remember if they called each fifth-grader’s name.
High school was my first real graduation, which makes sense, since a high school diploma was my first degree or diploma. There were nineteen of us in my graduating class, more or less. I remember graduation as possibly the first time a classmate was assigned to be my partner who didn’t complain, argue or make a face. We had a vote beforehand, if we wanted to wear caps and gowns or have the boys wear suits and ties and the girls wear white dresses. The class of 6 had done the suit/dress thing two years earlier. The class of 6 was not the class of 1986 or 1996 or 2006, but rather a class of 6 students. I had a vague sense that caps and gowns were really a college degree thing, and had grown up reading turn-of-the-century books where girls graduated in white dresses, often white dresses they had made themselves in home-ec class. This seemed suitable to me and I had always wanted a white dress. We voted for caps and gowns. I still have my cap, or rather, my cap is sitting on the head of a rag doll in my parents’ home. I wore a red dress under my cap and gown. There’s a picture of me in the red dress and cap in my grandmother’s home, framed. My head is tilted a little, as it always seems to be in photographs, even though it never seems to be tilted when I look at myself in the mirror.
We processed in to the orchestra playing Pomp and Circumstance. The “orchestra” consisted of non-senior and non-junior Honor Society members of the school’s two musical ensembles. I had played in the orchestra in earlier years. Second violin part, for the record, does not sound like anything recognizable as Pomp and Circumstance.
The recognizable theme of Pomp and Circumstance goes roughly:
Daah duh duh duh daah daah, daah duh duh duh daaaah
The second violin for the same opening bars is more or less:
Dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit dit
I can no longer hear the melody of Pomp and Circumstance. My brain fills in the second violin part. And cringes. Our recessional, by the way, was a piece we always called “Herclules” which sounded baroque. Handel maybe? I’m not sure I ever knew who wrote it. I loved it, much more than I ever loved Pomp and Circumstance before the second violin part ruined all that. I could sort of play the melody by ear. I was never asked to play the melody. I was first asked to play the second violin part and then later given a simplification of the second violin part. I didn’t sight read well at the time and had no idea what the second violin part was meant to sound like, modified or no. We also had a choral piece, Flying Free, which we sang soprano, second and alto along with a piano and flute. I sang second soprano of Flying Free for 6 years.
We sat in folding chairs on the stage of the school’s CafeGymTorium, on platforms I had helped build, lit by lights I had helped hang and focus. On one of the rafters was a pair of my old shoes, scuffed and paint-spattered. Several weeks earlier I had signed the shoes and another techie had scaled the scaffold to screw them to the beam. We’d gotten the idea from a theatre tour. A year earlier, that other techie was afraid to climb to the top of the scaffold. I had helped her climb when ready, without letting anyone on our crew ridicule her, or anyone else, for where they would or wouldn’t climb. I was proud of my leadership of the tech crew and I was proud of my shoes. And I was proud to be graduating, but I didn’t feel much of a connection to the other 18 people on the folding chairs on the stage. The headmaster made a speech. An invited guest speaker made a speech. The class president made a speech. The valedictorian made a speech. We walked across the stage, got our diplomas, did hugs and handshakes and returned to our folding chairs. I’m not sure I have spoken to any one of those 18 people since.
Four years later, I graduated from college, which is a degree-granting program. Bryn Mawr splits up the end of the year sort of the way some countries split up roles as belonging to the head of government and the head of state. One Friday in late April or early May is the Last Day of Written Work. The next Sunday is May Day, usually the first Sunday in May. May Day is marked with flowers and songs and strawberries and May Pole Dancing and plays and parades. At the end of May Day, the seniors process through a line of underclassfolks, everyone holding a lantern. People cry and hug their friends. Then the juniors storm the steps that were formerly reserved for seniors. They start the school cheer for the first time. The traditional year is over. There is then one week of exams for seniors. Seniors mark the end of the academic year by ringing the bell in the tower as many times as their class year. I had some help. There’s another week for everyone else’s final exams, which takes us to Saturday. There’s a Convocation with speeches and then Garden Party, which are reasonably Pompish. I stopped off to leave a second pair of scuffed shoes as a sacrifice to Athene. The next day is Graduation. I always felt that May Day was for the students and Graduation was for the families.
I can’t remember if we processed at all. We sat on white folding chairs under a tent on the campus green. We were seated by major, which meant I was not the last to graduate, because B for Biology comes before a lot of things. I was the last biology major to graduate. I can’t remember if there was music. We were issued gowns from the costume closet. We wore caps. Underneath mine I wore a pink dress. There’s a picture of me in the pink dress and cap in my grandmother’s home, framed. My head is tilted a little. My hair is pinned up in this picture and in a ponytail for my high school picture. I otherwise cannot tell the difference between the two.
My father had apparently expressed a desire for the family car to survive through my college graduation. He had apparently expressed this desire in front of the car. The car survived graduation and made it about half of the 6 hour drive home before the transmission gave out on an exit ramp.
Nine years later I graduated from Medical School, which is also a degree-granting program. The ceremony took place at a major concert hall nearby. I wore a gown and some fur collar thingie. There’s a picture of me in a different pink dress wearing the fur collar thingie, also framed at my grandmother’s house, and my head is tilted exactly the same way as in the other two graduation photos and I have to stop and figure out which one is which every time I look at them.
My biggest concern about my medical school graduation was accessibility since I was not climbing stairs well, and since it would matter to my family if I walked across the stage with a cane. I wrote up the whole ceremonial nightmare here at the time. Even though I had asked about stairs several months in advance, and was assured there were a few to each side of the stage and we had a plan to deal with them, they sprung 1.5 flights of stairs on me backstage at the rehearsal several hours before the event. I had a huge breakdown, and only because I had a popular classmate with a broken foot was I able to bypass the 1.5 flights of stairs for the event itself. The highlight of my medical school graduation was a Bryn Mawr alumna in the audience starting the Bryn Mawr cheer after I graduated. And knowing I wouldn’t have to deal with my medical school ever again.
I had a different car by this time. The transmission just about made it over the mountains from Philadelphia to West Virginia before giving out entirely.
Three years later I completed my residency program. Residency is not a degree or diploma program, so there’s no need for a graduation. Furthermore, I made it quite clear to everybody involved that I had no intention of ever graduating from anything ever again. It was hell on transmissions.
We had a dinner instead, just our pediatrics department, for the 6 of us. We showed pictures from Halloweens and from baby showers and from the resident retreat a month earlier that I secretly wondered if we were only having to generate pictures for the dinner. I think they played some nice background music as the slides played on screen. We invited families and attendings and managed to get most of the other-year residents off rotation to join us After a nice, low-key dinner, we did have a little ceremony where they gave out teaching and research awards and each of us got a certificate of completion and a nice clock and we did hugs and handshakes.
Now it’s four years later. I’m the only Fellow in our department. And fellowship is not a degree or diploma program. So I was expecting a lunch or dinner, a mug, some joke gifts, hugs and handshakes.
Two weeks ago, someone mentioned my graduation off-hand.
This was the first I’d heard of it. And it hadn’t occurred to me to ask, since fellowship is not something from which one graduates. And I’m not in the hospital with the residents who might have been talking about such things. An actual graduation ceremony, for the 47 residents and 3 fellows completing all the programs in the hospital. Everyone just assumed someone else had told me. There was a promise of chocolate-dipped strawberries at the reception to follow.
With 2 weeks notice, I didn’t even try to get my parents here. They may be upset later but it was the right decision for me. I invited two co-workers who were not involved in the ceremony, who I trusted not to make a big deal out of things, and warned everyone not to call it a graduation. I started to e-mail people about the stairs.
Two days before the event, they announced the dress code: white coats, suit and tie for men, black/white business attire for women. Fortunately, my department had ordered me a white coat at the start of my fellowship. They almost didn’t, because people in our department almost never wear white coats, and I stopped after a few months when I realized how much time I spent crawling around on the floor. Also, I didn’t need the pockets the way I had in residency, because I had an office. Right before the ceremony, someone pointed out that my white coat actually had the old hospital logo on it, the one that was changed last year when we “rebranded.” She managed to fold over the collar to hide the old logo. Also fortunately, I actually had a black suit jacket and skirt. I’d worn them before, to funerals.
Also two days before the event, we received written instructions, including a parking map, diagrams diagrams for the processional/recessional, two pages of narrative instructions, a list of participants in order with seating assignments. I think more paper was generated for this event than for my high school, college and medical school graduations combined, which are all things people actually graduate from. The ceremony occurred in a local theatre. It turned out the stage was accessible. There were a few steps backstage, but no surprise full flights that I had to climb with other people in step. They played a recording Pomp and Circumstance with the second violin part loud and clear in the background. We processed in. We walked across the stage as our program directors said nice things about us. We recessed out. I was on call and realized I had gotten paged. I called the social worker back to discuss a patient. We reconvened for a reception. I had my chocolate-dipped strawberry. A hammer dulcimerist and a cellist played Pachelbel’s Canon. I socialized with the 5 people there from my department who I see every day. I met someone who had heard me speak recently at Grand Rounds who told me he had been able to use my material to address problematic language used to discuss a patient. I went home and went to bed.
Recently, I spoke to a group of counselors at a camp for kids with disabilities. Wanting to impress the counselors, who were college students, the camp director wanted to know how much school and training I had done to get to that point. When I clarified, he said to start with college which added up to 14 years.
Whether you slice it as a 3 year training program, 10 years of medical training, or the 14 years he cited, I’m three weeks away from being done for good. I’m ready in terms of medical knowledge and patient care skills. I do have to write up my research, and there’ll be a certifying exam to take some time next year, but basically I’m done.
Being done matters to me. Knowing I’ve completed the training matters. Celebrating my accomplishment with people who care about me matters, including co-workers who have already thrown me one party complete with silly hats, a bag of chocolate chips and a rousing rendition of – wait for it – For She’s A Jolly Good Fellow.
Ceremonies where I dress up to walk across a stage to strains of Elgar’s second violin part so that people can take pictures just don’t hold the same meaning.
no subject
Academic dress (cap and gown) belongs to Higher Education, ie University. People who don't go to University have many other reasons to be proud and many ways to show their pride.
no subject
A prom is a dance held near the end of the year. A formal dance. Think dress similar to a formal wedding. Weeks of Big Deal about who is asking whom. People may or may not go without a date depending on school culture. Some schools are better about same-sex dates than others. There are some schools in the US with a history of alarming racism, sexism and homophobia as relate to prom policies. There is often a popularity contest that elects a Prom King, Prom Queen and a court. There is also a tradition of consuming alarming amounts of alcohol either before the event or during an "afterparty" considering almost no participants are actually old enough to legally purchase alcohol which has resulted in a tragic tradition of kids dying in alcohol-related car crashes following prom.
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"had grown up reading turn-of-the-century books where girls graduated in white dresses, often white dresses they had made themselves in home-ec class."
At a guess, Girl of the Limberlost and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn were two of these books.
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I have no problem with graduations where graduations are due. But I do have a problem where the only way to mark the end of a something is by co-opting the rite of graduation. It's like not having any other way to throw a party than to imitate a wedding.
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Ye gods I hated that school. I was only there a year, but it was clear it was hell. I was so very happy to escape. It completely boggles my mind that someone would think that making kids wear formal uniforms (black dress shoes with no more than 1/2" heel, navy tights, grey wool skirts, white buttondown shirt red sweater vest, navy blazer, and an ascot, for the older girls - I can't remember what the younger ones wore) and go to an assembly that took up most of the morning every week. Oh, and around once a month, you had to perform at said assembly, with relatively big productions at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter...plus a patriotic one and a musical review on dates I can't remember. Did I mention that parents were expected to come to all of these? Such a ridiculous production of showing off what the school is training your offspring to do.
I kind of regret not graduating from high school. My high school was a little all-girls place, and like a lot of the old, small schools, it had a rather lovely ceremony. White dresses, each girl given a bouquet of red roses, etc. I think there was a celebratory luncheon after, but it's been half a lifetime, so I don't remember for certain.
My undergrad and grad school graduations were...well, I was glad my family was there, and proud of me. One of my favorite uncles turned out for both, which was nice.
My law school graduation got me all choked up. You know all the crap I've been through to get that degree. I was the last one to process and all. We had a speaker I liked, who talked about how injustice happens because people don't stand up, and how it's something that we have a special responsibility to do - to uphold not just the rule of law, but justice. Hudson was anxious because of all the noise, so he was a bit of a pain, but I had professors and admin staff all telling me how glad they were that I was there, how happy it made them to see me really make it. The dean of my law school congratulated me in a low voice, and said she admired my tenacity. As I crossed the stage after receiving my diploma, I punched it up into the air, and the crowd cheered. I don't know if it was just that they liked the show of spirit from a graduate, or if they saw the dog and figured my road had been harder than most. But the whole arena cheered for me. I was hard-pressed not to cry. It was a very special moment that I will always carry with me.